Wednesday, September 04, 2013

A Day in Corrales

 A Day in Corrales

I am among thirty other painters participating 
in the first ever Corrales Plein Air event.
We have descended on the village of Corrales for five days of artist bliss - 
finding the perfect spots to paint,
lugging all of our painting gear around,
a kick-off party on Monday evening,
five days of painting,
a Quick Draw competition this wekend,
and an exhibition opening at Gathering Artists Gallery on Saturday.

A few scenes of life in Corrales:

 red chile ristras, of course

 an old red truck - gotta have one of those

 a view from my car of one of the long winding Corrales dirt roads 

 This is the first spot I picked to paint - the old Corrales church.

 My beginning block-in. 
I ended up taking this painting home and scraping it all off.
It just felt really washed out and blah.

 Some of my fellow painters

 The Sandia mountains and the chile fields

 I'd like to say this is a meadow but it's not.
It's a beautiful planting of cosmos in front of someone's house.

 My favorite house in Corrales.
I painted it!

 One of the ditches overflowing with native sunflowers

 A cool old wagon

 Now this is what I call free range chickens!
This guy came out and his chickens all ran to him.
He started throwing grain all over the yard and those chickens went crazy.
I'm thinking he had about a hundred chickens. 
And a really cool chicken coop.


 A beautiful panoramic view of the Sandia mountains.

 I peeked into someone's gate, very very pretty.

 More painters, these artists are painting in the courtyard of Casa San Isidro,
a really old adobe house filled with all things vintage New Mexican.

 Another painter near the old church.

Sunflowers that I painted today.
All paintings are supposed to be 80% plein air,
which means I may do a little finessing in the studio in the next few days.

 Corrales always has the coolest scarecrows.
I couldn't NOT paint him!

One of the houses I painted.
These are not my usual colors.
Oh, they are the same paints I always use.
They just mix differently when you're out in nature.
Takes some getting used to.

Tomorrow I will talk more about my tools and my plein air experience.

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